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hive

Hey, guys!!! Ohmygoodness, I’m so sorry I haven’t posted in so long! With school starting, I’ve been having trouble finding anything to blog about, but I promise I’ll start getting back on it!!!
First of all, I’m kind of quitting Animal Jam. I’ll get on every once in a while just for kicks, but I won’t really be posting about it as much, and I won’t be extremely up-to-date on AJ news. I’m sorta making way for Minecraft 1.8 and Planet Minecraft, which I prefer over AJ because the possibilities are basically limitless. I’ve been doing a bunch of stuff on Planet Minecraft, including being a finalist in the site contest and winning 3rd in another smaller contest, so if you really want to keep up with my Minecraft skins and stuff, just watch my account. If you actually want to find me on Minecraft, get on the server called the Hive [eu.hivemc.com]. I’ll most likely be playing Block Party.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Oh, and I’m also discontinuing my current Fiction Friday story, since I’m pretty much the only one that seems to like it. Anyway, stay updated; I’m coming back!

It was a sleepless night for the wolf sisters. They woke up Scooter, told her to keep an eye on Crashing and Fauna, and went with Liza all the way to the Alpha Council House at the top of Mt. Shiveer at the edge of the mountains. It was almost eleven o’ clock when they finally reached the summit. Most of the other Alphas, looking ruffled and nervous, had already reached the top, and, to the wolves’ embarrassment, there didn’t seem to be any other non-Alpha animals there.
“Flora, Juniper, Lucky,” said a voice anxiously. They turned to see Peck, her violet eyes wide and her whiskers quivering. “I’m sorry to hear about Greely. I know you three are really close to him.”
“He’ll be okay,” Flora said, although it sounded rather like she was reassuring herself. “They’ll put a search party together, and we’ll find him no problem.”
“Flora, you know what this means,” whispered Juniper when everyone was out of earshot. “The Phantom King. He’s already got Greely. His plan’s working, and the other Alphas are doing exactly what he wants them to.”
Flora’s eyes widened. “We have to warn them,” she whispered. Juniper nodded.
Lucky was discussing battle plans in a low voice with Sir Gilbert. Sir Gilbert wasn’t Greely’s best friend – in fact, the two had a long history of consternation – but the huge tiger’s loyalty was unmatched, and there was no way he’d step down from helping his fellow Alpha.
“Got a plan?” he said to Lucky.
“Run in there, save Greely, and whip those phantoms’ big black butts,” she replied.
“Sounds good to me,” said Sir Gilbert.
“Attention!” called Liza from the end of the large table in the center of the room. All talk ceased, and everyone took a seat at the huge conference table. Flora, Juniper, and Lucky were able to share Greely’s empty seat, and it wasn’t that cramped, considering the size of the missing Alpha.
“Yesterday, Greely left Jamaa on one of his missions,” said Liza. “We weren’t worried until he didn’t return, and one Sparkle Wingedlily, an arctic wolf that was watching Miss Cutestar while Flora and Juniper went to the Hive to help Lucky, said he had set off for the Hive. He should have come back quickly, but he didn’t.”
Flora felt herself go cold. Greely was at the Hive. It wasn’t that she didn’t think he, Alpha, couldn’t take care of himself, but the Phantom Hive was dangerous to any animal, immortal or not. The Alphas’ immortality wasn’t absolute, after all; they would never die of old age or grow any older, but they could be killed in battle like a normal animal.
“Naturally, we will assemble a party of our best warriors to venture into the Hive and find him. It – ”
“Wait!” Juniper burst out. “While we were in the Hive, the Phantom King told us his plan. He was planning on capturing Greely, then, while we were all busy, leak the phantoms into Jamaa and take it from the inside out.”
All eyes turned to the blue wolf, and she blushed.
“What was his plan?” asked Liza softly.
So Juniper told them everything the Phantom King had said. When she finished, Sir Gilbert pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. “We must act,” he growled, and shouts of assent filled the room.
“Quiet!” shouted Liza. “This is indeed a bad situation, but we can’t rush into it. We have to leave a group behind to keep vigil over Jamaa’s borders and make sure the phantoms don’t infiltrate, and form a search party as well. Sir Gilbert, Peck, Ruby, Lucky, and Flora will search for Greely.”
The named animals stood up. The huge tiger, rabbit, rhino, and two wolves, all great warriors, promised they would give everything they could, and wasted no time in leaving for the Hive.
“That leaves the matter of security,” continued the panda. “Cosmo, Graham, Juniper, and I will watch the land borders. Harper and Marco can take the waterways.”
Harper and Marco were the Seal and Penguin Alphas, respectively. “On it,” said Harper, throwing Liza the finger-gun. Juniper quietly rolled her eyes.
“And Crashing?” she asked hesitantly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t just leave her alone. We’ve got a little penguin and a rabbit, too.”
Liza raised her eyebrows at the last part, but said, “They can stay with LaSelle while you do your duties as guard.” The glamorous raccoon rose from the table. “I’ll take very good care of your little ones, Miss Spiritbird.”
“Thanks,” said Juniper. She gave LaSelle her address so she could pick them up, then left with her Alpha helpers to organize a watch over Jamaa.
Meanwhile, the search party was about to reach the bottom of Mt. Shiveer. It was a much faster journey downhill, and with their long legs and Alpha speed, they almost halved the time it took to get down.
Sir Gilbert shook the dirt and snow out of his fur once they’d reached the bottom. “It’s about an hour’s journey to the Hive,” he said in his bass voice. “We should arrive just after midnight. You all ready?”
“Ready as ever,” said Flora, digging her claws into the rocks beneath her.
With the affirmative from everyone else in the party, the second leg of their journey began. Huge stony mountains loomed at them from all sides, towering above their heads, making even the Alphas seem miniscule by comparison.
“I’m almost glad we got here,” said Peck once they’d reached the Hive. “Those mountains looked too sinister. I bet they were crawling with phantoms.”
“Well, get ready for more,” growled Ruby. She tossed her head from side to side, then smashed her horn through a rock by the entrance. “I’m waiting for whatever those phantoms throw at us.”
So they all went inside the Hive. Lucky bowed her head and quickened her pace as her fur stood on end at the sight of a bloodstained patch just inside the mouth. She tried not to think about Little and her terrible, if brave, death.
“Keep your guard up,” whispered Sir Gilbert, whose head was scraping against the roof of the tunnel. More than once he’d hit it on a rock and said some extremely rude things to the ceiling.
“We’re getting close,” said Flora. “I know where we are.”
After five more minutes of narrow, winding tunnels, Flora spotted the sign that marked the entrance of the dungeons. She crouched low, and motioned her companions to do the same. One phantom drifted from one side of the corridor to the other, guarding the doorway, but the search party wasn’t nervous in the least.
“Here we go,” said Ruby, a daring smile spreading across her sharp features. Flora couldn’t help thinking that she was among a group of Luckies.
“On your mark,” muttered Sir Gilbert.
“Get set…” Despite Peck’s size, she managed to look like a fierce enemy.
“GO!” shouted the rhino.
The phantom never had a chance against all five of them. With one slash of Ruby’s claw-sharp horn, he was nothing but a pile of goop on the ground.
But the worst was yet to come.

~~~

Thanks for reading! I still don’t have a good title for this story, so if you have any suggestions, PLEASE put them in the comments!!

Please, please, PLEASE post your title ideas in the comments!! I’m still stuck!!
Without further ado, the next installment of the AJ Story!

~~~

“Is this it?” asked Juniper. Flora gave her a withering look.
“Well, it’s a giant cave in the middle of the mountains with phantom tracks everywhere. I’d say this is it.” Juniper looked slightly irritated.
“I only meant – I don’t know, it’s a stress thing.”
“Stalling?” Flora smiled a little.
“Exactly.”
The mouth of the Hive was enormous. Greely’s volcano probably couldn’t have fit in it, but their house would have been swallowed up. The edge was rimmed in what looked like violet char marks, but only something with the power of a phantom could have burned inch-deep gouge marks in solid stone.
Flora started walking, one paw firmly in front of the other, steadfastly toward the Hive.
“Wait,” said Juniper. Flora heard the clink of glass as Juniper rummaged through her pockets.
“What?” she said. “Don’t you want to find Lucky?”
“I want to just as much as you, if not more,” answered Juniper curtly. “But we can’t just go barging in. They’ll see us for sure, and you know as well as I do that we’re outnumbered a thousand to one.” She held out her paw. She was holding a tiny, plain glass bottle with a dark, shiny, purplish liquid inside.
“Greely and I developed this,” said Juniper. “It – ”
“This isn’t going to be like the BOOMseeds, is it?” asked Flora. The BOOM stood for Bombarding Organic Oxidizing Macroorganism, but Lucky, who had helped test them, liked “Boom” better. The BOOMseeds were, without a doubt, superb weapons, but phantom-disintegrating, detonating-on-impact grain wasn’t Flora’s idea of a good project for her little sisters.
“Um… not really,” said Juniper evasively. “It’s diluted phantom goop – you know, that stuff they spew everywhere when they die. With a few other ingredients added, it should give us phantom forms for long enough to get through the Hive and back out with Lucky.”
Flora was speechless. This was by far the riskiest concoction Juniper had come up with, and the margin for failure was tiny.
“What if this goes wrong and we end up as phantoms forever?” said Flora wildly.
“We have no choice,” replied Juniper.
“I am NOT drinking that stuff,” said Flora.
Five minutes later, Flora was holding the vial of phantom juice so hard the glass nearly shattered in her paw.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said helplessly.
“Think of Lucky,” said Juniper. “No more finding couch stuffing in the toilet if you don’t do it.”
“Believe it or not, I miss that,” said Flora. She took a deep breath and poured the thick black liquid down her throat.
She dropped the vial as soon as it touched her lips. Juniper caught it just before it shattered on the rocks. The solution was the consistency of tar and tasted like a combination of burning hair and overcooked meat. It burned as it went down her throat, and it made her entire body tingle like it was asleep. She heard a tinkling sound as Juniper consumed her half and dropped the bottle.
Everything was a blur of burning pain for barely a second. Then it all cleared and Flora opened her eyes wide.
Eyes?
She looked down and gasped. She was no longer a wolf. She was glistening black and sparking with electricity.
She was a phantom.
Flora heard another, almost imperceptible humming noise behind her and turned around. Juniper was hovering over the ground about seven feet behind her.
“You look nice,” giggled the younger sister.
“You do, too,” said Flora with a smile. It looked strange on her phantom features.
“You look way too happy to be a phantom,” said Juniper. She screwed up her face and put on a scornful look.
“Not bad,” said Flora, and frowned darkly.
“Ready to go,” said Juniper, and they went into the Hive, leaving their things just inside the cave so they could get it quickly.
Once they were inside, all the natural light disappeared like fog on a warm morning. Luckily, their new phantom night vision helped them see normally, but they couldn’t imagine being stuck in there without their bolstered sight. Every once in a while, they’d spot a patch of some kind of luminescent fungus, but that was the only light in sight.
Although they could see in the pitch-blackness, the Hive was like an enormous rocky maze. There were tunnels spiraling out in every direction, and every one of them looked the same.
The phantoms themselves didn’t help, either. Even though Juniper and Flora knew they looked inconspicuous, it still gave them the chills whenever one of the dark, electric creatures drifted by. They stopped when they saw a carving over one of the tunnels.
“’Dungeons’,” whispered Flora, reading from the heading above one of the tunnels. It actually said something more like , but Juniper’s solution had given them the gift of being able to read, speak, and understand the phantoms’ tongue.
“Well, here we are,” said Juniper, and took a deep breath. Phantoms weren’t her thing at the best of times, but here, in the heart of the Hive, where so many things could go wrong, was not her idea of a morning trip.
They hadn’t gone three feet when a massive phantom loomed out at them from the shadows. Juniper gave an involuntary squeak as he seemingly appeared from nowhere.
“What is your business here?” he growled in a raspy voice.
Flora stood up tall. “We want to enter the dungeons,” she said. “Did the Phantom King appoint a guard that couldn’t even figure that out?”
A flash of electricity shot down the guard’s sleek black body, and he gave his tentacles a little shake. “You better know who you’re messing with, little girl. Do you have clearance to enter the dungeons?”
Juniper was furious. Their entire mission had been thrown out the window by an issue of clearance. She should have known there would be a guard. It was the Phantom Hive’s dungeon, for goodness sake. But not all was lost.
Juniper came forward, her face a picture of anger. “Listen, you bobbleheaded idiot, we want to enter the dungeons. The Phantom King won’t be very happy if you don’t let his own phantoms in the dungeons, don’t you think?”
Flora was amazed at her usually meek little sister’s attitude, but the guard was not fazed.
“I can let who I want in!” he roared, and began to ready one flickering tentacle to strike.
Thwack!
Before he could move even an inch, Flora launched herself at him and began striking him again and again right on top of the head. After several hits, the guard’s resistance wore out and he fell to the ground.
“Is he dead?” asked Juniper, tentatively nudging him with one tentacle.
“Nah,” said Flora. “They sort of explode when they die. This one’s just knocked out.”
“Let’s do this before he wakes up,” said Juniper.
Without another word, the two disguised wolves floated through the rocky doorway and into the dungeons.